Data breaches feel like a regular occurrence in 2019, and there’s nothing more alarming than receiving notification your email/username/password has been leaked online. To help address this, Google kicked off Safer Internet Day with a new Chrome Extension.
What’s it do?
Password Checkup is a simple Chrome browser extension that will notify you in the browser whenever you log in to a 3rd party site using a username and password combination that has been detected in a known breach.
To start using Password Checkup you obviously have to be using the Chrome browser (or something compatible with Chrome extensions, like Brave).
Head on over to the extension page and install it. Once installed you’ll have a green shield icon in your browser bar, from there the system will notify you if any username and password combination you use on any sites is compromised.
For those worried that Google will be getting a copy of all of your usernames and passwords, Google’s got some good news for you. Password Checkup was developed in unison with researchers at Stanford University.
The team have designed a system whereby not only does Google not know the username and password combination you used, when the extension performs a check against the breach database that traffic is heavily encrypted, meaning your details remain secure even if intercepted by a man in the middle style attack.
With data breaches on the rise, it’s great to see Google develop tools like this to protect users online. Google has promised to continue to develop Password Checkup as part of their efforts to make the internet a safer place for us all.
Google has also hinted that today is just the beginning of a week-long discussion of internet safety from their various teams. We’ll keep an eye out for the best bits.
